Last week’s Republican conclave in Cleveland came across less as a nominating convention than as a four-day nervous breakdown, a moment of fracture and bipolarity from a party that no longer has any clear idea what it stands for or what it is. Everywhere you turned, there was something that made you embarrassed for them, something so disconnected from fact, logic or decency as to suggest those things no longer have much meaning for the party faithful.
This gathering made one thing clear, if it had not been already. The battle between left and right is no longer a contest of ideas, no longer about low taxes versus higher ones, small government versus big government, intervention versus isolation. No, the defining clash of our time is reason versus unreason, reason versus an inchoate fear and fury growing like weeds on the cultural, class, religious and racial resentments of people who cling to an idealized 1954 and wonder why the country is passing them by.
The Republicans, as presently constituted, have no ideas beyond fear and fury. And Lord help us, the only thing standing between us and that is a grandmother in pantsuits.
The Democrats have their gathering this week in Philadelphia. Ordinarily, you’d call on them to present a competing vision, but the GOP has set the bar so low you’d be happy to see the Democrats just present a vision, period, just appeal to something beyond our basest selves, just remind us that we can be better and our politics higher than what we saw last week.
This has to happen. Because, you see, the Republicans were right on at least one point: The nation does face a clear and present danger, a menace to our values, our hopes and our future. If the GOP wants to see this threat, there’s no need to look outward.
Any good mirror will do.
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